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Vital Metals (ASX:VML) to redesign pit at Nechalacho following ore discovery

ASX News, Materials
ASX:VML      MCAP $23.58M
28 January 2022 11:16 (AEST)

Product staging area at ore sorter. Source: Vital Metals.

Vital Metals (VML) has completed a maiden mining and ore sorting campaign at its Nechalacho rare earths project in Canada.

The company said it only mined two-thirds of the planned 599,000-ton campaign, while its ore sorter exceeded expectations delivering high quantities of categorised materials.

The ore sorter sorted lower-grade material previously below the resource cut-off not included in the mine plan. This meant materials originally thought to be waste were recategorised as low grade.

Vital also intersected a high-grade zone, the ‘dragon’s tail’, at North T during mining which has prompted the company to review its mine plan.

Vital Metals Managing Director Geoff Atkins explained the reasoning behind the review.

“Because we have identified all this additional material which we are now able to process, we made the decision to amend our mining campaign, so that we can redesign the pit to ensure we maximise this additional quantity of rare earths which we will mine at North T in subsequent campaigns,” he said.

A redesign of the pit will be completed during the Northern summer with a follow-up mining campaign to be completed during the 2023 or 2024 summer period.

Shares were in the grey, trading at 4.9 cents at 11:15 am AEDT.

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